It is well known in the art to provide graphic interfaces for analyzing database search results. Further, browser systems are known which format and display both text and graphics. For example, the Folio Infobase system. Jouve S. A. GTI. and Dataware engines, as well as commercially deployed systems from Lexis/Nexis. Westlaw, MicroPatent LLC (assignee hereof), as well as many other proprietary and Internet based systems, provide such capabilities.
Typically, the graphic content of such documents is small or insignificant in comparison to the text, or the text and graphics are stored as separate file types. Systems that store text and compressed graphics in a single file, with user defined and/or intelligent control over display formatting at the client are not generally found.
It is also known to allow selection of a group of listed documents for later processing. However, the prior art typically does not allow the user to classify listed documents into a plurality of different classifications for selective processing according to the categorization.
It is well known in the art to provide data files having text and graphic data content. For example, popular word processing formats, Adobe PDF®, and other file types integrate text and graphics.
These formats, however, are proprietary, meaning that other software packages are typically unable to process types of data stored in the files. Thus, the data embedded in such composite data files is typically unavailable or partially unavailable to thin applets designed to deal with various standard data formats.
One alternative is to provide the data in two separate files, leading to certain difficulties in maintaining the relation between the two portions of the file. Likewise, a wrapper may be provided to encompass the pair of files in a single resulting file, such as by using the known ZIP format. However, this entails use of an additional applet.